Virtual Cognos User Group – North Texas
When you hear the word, “Texas” what comes to mind? Maybe it’s ten-gallon hats, cowboy boots, barbeque, Cognos performance optimization! Okay, maybe your favorite BI tool isn’t top of mind, but it should be! For the first time ever, Motio is hosting a virtual North...
Cognos Performance Optimization Infographic
Let's cut to the chase. Cognos performance is something you probably don't think about until it's too late. We surveyed IBM Cognos Analytics users about their performance methodologies and compiled the findings into an infographic. Here's what we found:You don't...
Cognos Auditing Blog – Tips and Tricks for Large & High Volume Environments
A blog by John Boyer and Mike Norris. Introduction It is important to have the Cognos Auditing capability working to know and understand how Cognos is being used by your user community and help answer questions like: Who is using the system? What reports are they...
Baker Tilly Trusts Soterre with Audits
Financial Firm Built on Trust Baker Tilly is a leading advisory, tax, and assurance firm dedicated to building long-lasting relationships with its clients. Its mission is to protect its client’s value in an ever-changing world. The company emphasizes building trust...
Analytics in Retail: Is the Data Correct?
Retail is one of the top industries being transformed by AI and Analytics technology. Retail marketers need to involve segmentation, separation, and the profiling of diverse groups of consumers while keeping up with ever-evolving trends in fashion. Category...
Data Governance is not Protecting your Analytics!
In my prior blog I shared lessons around Modernization of Analytics, and I touched on the perils of not keeping end users happy. For Directors of Analytics, these people typically make up your biggest group of users. And when these users aren’t getting what they...
Modernizing Your Analytics Experience
In this blog post, we are honored to share the knowledge from guest author and analytics expert, Mike Norris, on planning and pitfalls to avoid for your analytics modernization initiative. When considering an analytics modernization initiative, there are several...
Qlik Luminary Life Episode 7 – An Interview with Angelika Klidas, Lecturer at The University of Applied Science, and Education Manager at 2Foqus Data & Analytics
Below is a summary of the video interview with Angelika Klidas. Please watch the video to see the entire interview. Welcome to Qlik Luminary Life Episode 7! This week’s special guest is Angelika Klidas, Lecturer at The University of Applied Science in...
Motio Tightens its Long Partnership with IBM— OEM Partnership Agreement Announced
Motio software is now available for purchase directly from IBM’s portfolio of products. We are excited to share the news about an original equipment manufacturing (OEM) agreement through which IBM will offer Motio software directly from IBM’s portfolio of products!...
Qlik Luminary Life Episode 6 – Getting To Know Mike Capone, CEO Of Qlik
*Below is a summary of the video interview with Mike Capone. Please watch the video to see the entire interview. Hey readers, welcome back to Qlik Luminary Life! This is episode 6 and we have a very special surprise guest for you today…Mike Capone, CEO of...
From Excel to Qlik Sense: Our Analytics Journey in the Insurance Industry
n this special guest blog post, Chirag Shukla, a CITO in the insurance industry, will be our guide for all of the adventures, discoveries, and milestones his company encountered on their analytics journey. We’ll start with Excel and end at our final destination,...
Instant Replay for Cognos Troubleshooting
Instant replay has revolutionized the way we consume entertainment. Was his foot in bounds when he made that catch? Let’s timeout and consult the zoom lens! Wait, what did she say? Rewind and play that scene again! Did you really run a red light? Time to fire up...
Qlik Luminary Life Episode 5 – The Kelsey Fautsch Interview
Welcome back to Episode 5 of Qlik Luminary Life! This week we caught up with Kelsey Fautsch to learn more about her previous 12 years of experience at Deloitte (*spoiler alert* SHE’S AVAILABLE FOR HIRE so if you’re reading this and looking for an MVP for your team,...
Qlik Luminary Life Episode 4 – An Interview with Juraj Mišina of EMARK Analytics
Episode 4 of Qlik Luminary Life is here! This week we had the opportunity to interview Juraj Mišina to learn more about what it’s like being a Senior BI Specialist at EMARK, one of the largest Qlik-exclusive consultancies in Central Europe, as well as a hobby...
Qlik Luminary Life Episode 3 – An Interview With Kabir Rab of Tahola LTD And Co-Founder Of Kids In Data
Welcome to episode 3 of Qlik Luminary Life! This week we caught up with Kabir Rab, solution architect at Tahola LTD to learn more about his data literacy workshop for kids, his love for the sport of cricket, and his advice for those wanting to become a...
Qlik Luminary Life – An Interview With Nitesh Sethi, CEO Of CliqVenus
In this week’s episode of Qlik Luminary Life, we had the pleasure of speaking with Nitesh Sethi, CEO of CliqVenus Consulting and Services, and learned more about how Qlik has helped him land Fortune 500 and 100 clients, his experience as a 3x Qlik Luminary, and why...
Should I stay or should I go?
As a small business, living in an app-based world, the number of applications we use has grown rapidly. This easily happens with cloud subscriptions and point solutions. We ended up with Hubspot for marketing, Zoho for sales, Kayako for support, Live chat, WebEx,...
Qlik Luminary Life – Joe Warbington of Vizlib
Here at Motio we’ve started a new blog and video interview series entitled Qlik Luminary Life. The purpose of this series is to highlight and showcase Qlik Luminaries, find out why they love Qlik and get to know them on a more personal level. For our first...
Soterre 1.8 Release
Soterre 1.8 Released in February In February, Motio released Soterre version 1.8, which includes new features, performance improvements, and bug fixes. All of our Soterre customers are highly encouraged to upgrade to this release. The full list of enhancements and...
A Deeper Dive into Qlik’s Statement of Direction: How Check In/Check Out Enhances Continuous Integration
Qlik Sense announced the addition of check in/ check out to their statement of direction, a huge step forward in applying Continuous Integration to your BI practice. At a technical level, Continuous Integration is the process...
Converting from CQM to DQM: A Cognos Customer’s Journey
Whether you’re considering moving to IBM Cognos Analytics on the Cloud, wanting to use JDBC drivers instead of a native database client, or just wanting greater visibility into performance-related characteristics of queries, adopting Dynamic Query Mode is a great...
Is Sensitive Data Secure at Your Organization? Stay Safe with PII & PHI Compliance Testing
If your organization regularly handles sensitive data, you must implement data security compliance strategies to protect not only the individuals that the data belongs to but also your organization from violating any federal laws (e.g. HIPPA, GDPR, etc). This...
CQM to DQM – Why the Transition Isn’t as Hard as You Think
Transitioning from CQM to DQM. It’s a hot topic, and one we have yet to discuss. Not dissimilar to a Cognos upgrade, you are looking into switching to Dynamic Query Mode because it supports new database types, enhances performance, and is required for Cognos on the...
An Intuitive Clean Out: How Organizing Photos Relates to a Cognos Upgrade
I got a notification on my phone that my storage space was running dangerously low. This has happened before, and I was not looking forward to spending Saturday sorting through my phone and deleting stuff before I could use the camera feature again. So I clicked on...
Product Spotlight on Soterre: Version Control and Deployment for Cognos TM1/Planning Analytics
Our Soterre product was conceptualized by, well, you! After constantly being asked, “Hey, can you make MotioCI but for TM1/Planning Analytics?” we knew something had to be done. If you aren’t familiar with MotioCI, the highlights include version control and...
We Answer Your Motio “In the Cognos Box” Questions
Unless you’re untouched by our marketing team (and really, why would you want that?) then you’ve heard of this “In the Cognos Box” announcement. And the more it’s promoted, the more questions come our way. We love the enthusiasm coming from our customers and...
Soterre Improves Visibility and Quality in Qlik Sense
Version control gave VTCT the freedom for data exploration in Qlik Sense. They no longer have to worry about creating new copies of each iteration of design.VTCT is a Qlik Data Intensive Company Vocational Training Charitable Trust (VTCT) is a specialist awarding...
Risk Administration Services Achieves Faster Data Delivery and the Freedom to Innovate
Version control reveals exactly what changed, enabling RAS to easily identify when an error was introduced.The safety net of version control gave RAS the confidence to make courageous decisions.A Vision of Growth Risk Administration Services is a rapidly growing...
How to Add a Footer to a Group of Cognos Reports
Let’s say you need to add the following confidentiality statement to each of your footers in dozens of existing Cognos reports: “The information contained within this report is proprietary and confidential. No part of this report may be disclosed in any manner to...
Locate and Mass Update Fonts in ALL your Cognos Reports, Quickly and Easily
Imagine your organization has decided to update their brand, and you’re tasked with updating the fonts on ALL company-wide reports that aren’t Arial or Helvetica with Arial. But how would you proceed to accomplish this herculean task? The average Cognos customer...
Using MotioCI “PDF Diff” To Accelerate The Cognos Upgrade Process
Locating errors in report outputs can be a difficult and complex task. It’s especially challenging if your Cognos system hosts a sea of reports! MotioCI can journey deep into your Development, Production, and QA environments to fish out error-filled report outputs....
Discover Performance Issues in your Cognos Environment with MotioPI!
In this follow up to my first post about filters. I am going to briefly talk about number filters in MotioPI Professional. Without further ado, let’s dive into number property filters in MotioPI! Number Property Filters What are Number Property Filters Number...
Cognos Monitoring – Get Alerts When Your Cognos Performance Starts To Hurt
Motio ReportCard is a fantastic tool for analyzing and optimizing your Cognos performance. ReportCard can assess the reports in your environment, locate issues that cause a decline in performance, and present the results of how much performance can be improved by...
Quickly Recover Lost, Deleted, or Damaged Cognos Framework Manager Models
Have you ever lost or corrupted a Cognos Framework Manager Model? Have you ever wished you could recover the lost model based on information which is stored in your Cognos Content Store (e.g. a package which was published from the lost model)? You’re in luck! You...
Why using MotioPI Search Filters helps you work more Efficiently in Cognos
Filtering In MotioPI One of the most powerful features in MotioPI is its ability to filter search results. Intelligent usage of filters will enable you to answer complex questions about your environment easily via MotioPI. Using filters isn’t always as simple as...
Easing the Cognos Upgrade Process
You know the drill: IBM announces a new version of their Business Intelligence tool, Cognos. You search the Cognos Blog-o-sphere and attend sneak-preview sessions for information on the newest release. It’s so shiny! Your reports will be so much happier in the...
Best Practices for Managing Cognos BI Performance
When I get a brand new, flawless, unsullied anything- laptop, smart phone, car, BI software system, or whatever the item…I vow to keep it lean and mean and tell myself, “This time I’m not going to accumulate any unnecessary content, apps, data, trash, take out...
Setting Up a Gateway to Enable SSO for Cognos 11 – IBM Cognos Configuration
How to Setup a Gateway for Cognos 11 A question that we very often get asked is this: “Does the Optional Gateway ever become a requirement?“ And the answer is, “Yes!” One of the most common scenarios where having an Optional Gateway setup becomes mandatory is...
How to Identify Cognos Reports with Embedded SQL
A common question that keeps getting asked of the MotioPI Support Staff is how to identify IBM Cognos reports, queries, etc. that utilize in-line SQL in their specifications. While most reports leverage a package to access your data warehouse, it is possible for...
How to Convert Reports to Fully Interactive Mode in Cognos Analytics
The launch of IBM Cognos Analytics marked the release of many new features along with phasing out many mainstays of previous Cognos versions. One of these new features is a type of report, called a “fully interactive” report. Fully interactive reports have...
How to test Cognos Data Source Connections
PROBLEM: A Cognos user (let’s call him “Carlos”) tries to run a report but receives an error message indicating that the attempt to connect to the data source failed. Carlos alerts you, the administrator, about the issue and you are now tasked with finding the...
IBM Cognos Framework Manager – Improve Model Elements Editing
One of MotioPI Pro’s basic fundamentals is to improve workflows and how administrative tasks are done in IBM Cognos in order to “give time back” to Cognos users. Today’s blog will discuss how to improve the workflow around editing Cognos Framework Manager model...
How to Prevent Broken Shortcuts in Cognos Using MotioPI Pro
Creating shortcuts in Cognos is a convenient way to access the information you use frequently. Shortcuts point to Cognos objects such as reports, report views, jobs, folders, and so on. However, when you move objects to new folders/locations within Cognos, the...
How to Resolve Failed Cognos Schedules by Reassigning Credentials
In some situations employees leave companies and the organization has not fully prepared for their exit. One specific scenario when an employee leaves that causes a great deal of extra work on IBM Cognos administrators involves the ex-employee’s scheduled jobs,...
Improve How you Analyze Cognos TM1 Memory Usage
If you are a TM1 administrator, you are likely aware of the demand for maintaining efficient memory usage in your Cognos TM1 instance. Imagine this scenario: your Cognos TM1 environment is starting to lag. You know there exists out-dated TM1 objects, but aren’t...
The ROI of Business Intelligence Tools and Bad Decisions
In the second half of the 2-part series on the importance of Business Intelligence tools, we’ll get into how an investment in BI software can prevent the costs associated with turnover and human resource mistakes. If you are with a small or medium enterprise, you...
Where Do You Rank on the IBM Analytics Maturity Model?
In this 2-part series, the importance of BI tools and their impact from a Human Resources perspective and a Business perspective will be explored. But before we get to the nitty gritty, where does your team fall on IBM’s spectrum of Business Intelligence mastery?...
Transitioning to a Different Cognos Security Source
When you need to reconfigure an existing Cognos environment to a use a different external security source (e.g. Active Directory, LDAP, etc), there are a handful of approaches you can take. I like to call them, “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.” Before we explore...
How to Get Proactive Alerts for Cognos Issues
When something goes wrong in your IBM Cognos environment, it’s important to immediately notify the team of people in charge of fixing issues. If an issue goes undetected the following unwanted scenarios can happen: A business user attempts to do something, it...
Security for IBM Cognos- How Much is Too Much?
There is often a misconception of the idea of security. Many think security means that your system can’t be hacked, and your personal files are not accessible. Security means that nobody can get your great aunt’s secret banana bread recipe. You can never be too...
IBM is Deprecating Query & Analysis Studio- Got a Migration Plan?
You’ve heard of self-deprecating humor, where the comedian roasts himself — like when Groucho Marx famously said, “I’d never join a club that would allow a person like me to become a member.” That’s not what we’re talking about here. “Deprecate” may not be a word...